Here’s a story that explains a bit about Kit Harington’s casting as Jon Snow: He was sporting a black eye, because he’d gotten into an altercation at McDonald’s late the night before. I now see Kit Harington in an entirely new light.

As he explains in the video for W magazine (via People), he and the young woman he was “sort of dating at the time” stopped by a McDonald’s late one night. There was a shortage of seats, so they joined another couple at their table. But then one of their companions became nasty, acting increasingly rude until, “He called her something like an ugly pig or something worse,” according to Harington. “I got up and said: ‘No, no, no, you can’t, you can’t call her that, get up.’” And, well:

“So I called him up for a fight, which I’d never done before,” Harington went on. “And of course he’d been sat down the whole time, and he got up and he just ... kept going. And I just realized at that point that I had to throw the first punch otherwise I’d look like a complete wimp.”

The end result?

“I got battered,” Harington admitted. “So then I went to the Jon Snow audition with a black eye – which I think that man who punched me in the face may have helped me get the job, so if you’re watching, thank you.”

He also admitted that he felt sound asleep on the stone slab while filming his dead Jon Snow scenes. “There’s nothing scarier than waking up in the middle of Game of Thrones world, naked, with everyone standing over you, and thinking, Oh my God, I’ve died and I’ve actually ended up in Westeros.”Truer words!